Spartan Saturday

Yesterday was a good day. I woke up early, with a plan. Cornering my nephew in the living room I asked, "what are you doing today?" "Nothing," was the reply. "Want to go down to the river and tailgate with Poppy? It won't be anything big, just some sandwiches he made, a few games of catch, and a little bit of the band...." "Sure!" Then, the big test was getting by my niece. She was fine with letting us go after I promised we would hang out on Sunday.

Before Bradley and I left, I found myself feeling the part of the cool aunt. "Have you ever driven a car?" I asked him. He said Grandpa Dean had let him steer once. Sooo, I let him drive my car down to the circle and back. Not unsupervised, of course. We practiced first, talked about how the brake was our best friend. We don't need to punch our best friend when we want it to stop, we only need to gently tell our best friend to stop. We fastened our seatbelts and put the car in drive.

Bradley was thrilled. He kept saying things like, "no way" "this is so awesome" "wow." When I told him to slowly stopped, he punched his best friend and we jerked forward due to that whole inertia thing. I smiled, knowing it was his first time and he was a little over excited. I had to help him steer around the circle and took a lot of breaks. We finally made it to his driveway, though I took over from there. As we were trading spots, Jase's mom, (Jase being a friend of Bradley's) drove by. "Did you see the look on her face?!" Bradley boasted. Ah, yes. Letting my nephew drive illegally felt like a finer moment in my life.

I drove down to the stadium and we listened to G Love the whole way there. We made it down to the tree where my dad was talking to a can man. Now, people have mistaken my father for being homeless because...he kind of looks homeless sometimes, so at first I wasn't sure if the guy was telling my dad about a certain shelter he should look into or waiting for my pops to finish off his Molson. After the guy left, with a couple of empty cans, we sat down to eat. We played catch for awhile, my dad re-teaching me how to throw properly. Then, dad and Bradley got into a sword fight with twigs, each man having to one up the other with how big their "twig" was, my dad finally trying to take the tree out and fight with it. All of this and the "my twig is bigger than yours" jokes were actually quite funny but I had to throw in my stern "BOYS. That's enough" a couple of times.

After the band went through, Bradley and I went back to the car and father went into the game. The next high point of the afternoon, after letting my 12-year-old nephew illegally drive, was taking him to Champions, a bar. I had a beer, he had some water, and we were good. We watched the game and played trivia, beating out all the other two players in the bar. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves. We got smoked out and went back to my sister's in time to see State lose. My niece said, "um, aunt Holly, the guys in the white just scored again..." I came rushing out of the bathroom, my heart falling. "Oh, just wonderful."

That night, we went to the Olive Garden for Jeff's birthday...the whole family (almost). Jeff's sister and brother, my sister, the kids, my dad, stepdad, mom, and Joey. It was a lot of fun and great dinner conversation. "So, how drunk did YOU get on your 21st?" At the end of the meal, everyone's tummies were full and we all felt our sides ache from laughing. We got up and started pushing our chairs in to leave. That was when I noticed my father, the slowest eater ever, still taking baby bites of his salad. "Wait! Dad isn't finished." Everyone looked at my father. "That's right....so SIT DOWN!" my father uncharacteristically said. And everyone did. It was pretty funny.

To make this blog longer, I'll discuss what happened when I got home. Bradley and I went through some old photos and laughed ourselves silly at them. I really have a good time with the kid.